Twenty years ago I bought the soundtrack to the "Music of Cosmos" (a 1980 science and philosophical show, first broadcast on PBS, narrated by the late Dr. Carl Sagan). The two-disc set is still available and there are other versions of the soundtrack.
The soundtrack is flawed. Most of the tracks had sound-effects from the television series mixed at the leading and trailing end of each of the orchestral pieces. Sounds of rockets, chain saws, birds, frogs and people would fade into the music and then fade away as the real music started. While this all made sense in the TV series, it made no sense on the album.
For the past two decades, I bristled at this. It would take an audio-editor to clean this up and what do I know about audio files - nothing.
Audacity
On a lark, I saw a free audio-editing program called Audacity.
No exaggeration, I downloaded the program, opened the first MP3 track and fixed the problems, all in about two minutes. This without having opened the help files or reading a single thing about the program.
Saving the results back as an MP3 took a few more minutes, requiring a plugin, and I was done. An hour later, 20 tracks were edited and the album is now what it should have been.
Basically, with most of the tracks, I cut off the first 5 to 10 seconds, then faded the music. A click here, a drag there, and I was done. Other tracks did not require this type of work, but the mixing on the original was done somewhat unprofessionally with some of the tracks starting too abruptly. It was easy to insert blank air and then fade in.
The Effects menu is displayed to the left. Click for a larger view, then click the right-x to return. You can blend tracks, shift, and all the editing you'd expect from any good photo-editor -- I mean, sound-editor.
Recommended Installation Steps:
I installed with these recommended steps. You'll note I did not use the official installer, instead choosing to download the ZIP. What is nice about this software is it does not have to be installed because you can simply expand the zip into a folder and run directly from there.
1. With Windows Explorer, create a new Program directory, such as
C:\Program Files (x86)\Util\Audacity
2. Go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Click the "Main Release" (currently version 1.26; I did not use the Beta versions).
Click the correct operating system (e.g. Windows)
On the Download page, scroll down and locate the Audacity Zip File
3. Open the downloaded Zip file and copy all contents to the directory built in step-1. This is all you need to do to install the program.
4. Optionally, other-mouse-click "Audacity.exe" and create a shortcut on your desktop.
5. Audacity can natively read MP3 files, but it cannot write them without a plug-in. Assuming you want to write MP3 files, do this step:
Open this link: http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/
Download either the Zip version or the installable version. If installing, let it install into the Audacity main program directory. If you download the zip, copy "lame_enc.dll" to the Audacity program directory, in step-1.
When Audacity first tries to write an MP3 (File, "Export as MP3"), it will prompt, asking for the location of the LAME DLL. Browse to this folder. This is a one-time setup.
This completes the installation steps.
Audacity General Hints:
(version 1.26)
It is not obvious how to advance into a song. Click Stop, then click the position in the song. If the software is playing or paused, it will not allow you to move the play-position.
The Effects menu is only active when Stopped. At all other times, the options are grey.
When you save the song, Audacity wants to save the Project as an AUP file. Unless you want to keep the editing session (saving Undo's and other settings), you can ignore saving the "project." Instead, choosing menu "Export as MP3" or as a "WAV". See installation notes, above.
Once exported, there is no obvious way to close the AUP session -- there is no File Close menu. Selecting File, Open, opens another track and what you will find is it opens a second copy of Audacity. This surprised me.
By the time I was done editing 20 tracks, I found 20 copies of Audacity opened and each wanted to save an AUP project file. I abandoned/cancelled each Save (the files were already exported as MP3). Not being able to close an edited track may be due to my obvious lack of skills with this software, but Audacity does not behave as a normal program does in this area and I found it confusing. Why not have a "File, Close" menu?
The Audacity website has numerous links to online books, wikis, and a host of other resources, with many tutorials that discuss all kinds of editing effects. This is a recommended program and it deserves your support.
If you use the latest "beta" release, you will find that several of your concerns have been addressed. As far as I can determine, the beta releases are very stable.
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